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Taking a sober look at security

Not surprisingly, challenges relating to security and privacy continue to rank highly on the list of concerns for both IT and business executives. Whereas in our 2011 survey, security ranked as the top challenge facing executives, in this year’s survey, security-related challenges such as data loss and intellectual property theft ranked below other issues such as integration challenges and implementation costs.

This does not mean that security is no longer a key issue for executives. Of the possible security concerns, data loss and privacy risks were cited the most often by respondents, while general security risks and risk of intellectual property theft were only somewhat less frequently identified.

Confidence in security grows

Greg Bell, Principal, KPMG in the US and a contributing author to the report noted that while the data shows that security-related concerns are still top of mind, the real story underlying these findings is that organizations are quickly gaining more confidence in the security of their cloud services providers.

According to this survey, concerns related to security do not seem to be slowing cloud adoption. In fact, more than a third of respondents suggest that their organizations will adopt cloud within the next 18 months in areas such as sourcing and procurement; supply chain and logistics; finance, accounting and financial management; business intelligence and analytics; and tax.

“Functions that – until just recently – were considered too sensitive or complex for cloud are now being put on the table. That’s a sure sign that executives are becoming more confident in their cloud providers’ security regime. But the fact remains that security is still a significant concern for business and IT leaders. ”